☕️ RELATEABLE ☙ Saturday, September 21, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Governor DeWine defends Haitian Invasion, badly; pervert Dr. Varma gets corporate media's attention, a little; Routh reporting still raising eyebrows; two great last-minute election changes; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! Your Weekend Edition roundup includes: Mike DeWine whines about Springfield coverage of the Haitian Invasion; deviant covid czar covered in corporate media, sort of; Routh reporting continues to raise concerns; Republicans scheme to tweak Nebraska rules to help Trump; Georgia election board passes pallet of new rules to crack down on cheating.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥🔥 Yesterday, human mole and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine published a defensive op-ed in the New York Times headlined, “I’m the Republican Governor of Ohio. Here Is the Truth About Springfield.” As usual, the article delivered the opposite of what the headline promised.

DeWine began by admitting the curious fact he was born and raised in Springfield. Based on what’s happening there, DeWine doesn’t seem to like his hometown much. Maybe he was badly bullied as a child.  Or, maybe he does love Springfield, but just wants to merge together his two favorite places.

DeWine then admitted that, okay, Springfield has a few problems. And those problems are called Donald J. Trump. Plus racists. Apart from that, Springfield is a halcyon habitat for hardworking Haitians, who are exactly like you and me except they used to live in Haiti, never drove a car before, believe in possessing spirits, and sometimes eat cats. Whoops! Strike that last.

What you racists fail to understand is that, before conducting midnight voodoo rituals, Haitians put their woven sandals on one at a time just like the rest of us. And even some Americans are embracing Haiti’s colorful religion, which, while it occasionally involves doing unspeakable things to innocent chickens, it also summons all sorts of fascinating spirits. Plus it involves zombies, and who doesn’t love the Walking Dead.

Mike DeWine, a platinum-level Haitian tourist, didn’t get to be Governor by accident.

All the other complaints are just logistics issues: teaching the Haitians how to speak English, how to drive cars, and how to apply for generous benefits programs using government-issued smartphones and taxpayer-funded internet services. These logistical problems aren’t the Haitians’ fault; according to DeWine, these problems are your responsibility. Because if you don’t accept the invastion, they will call you names and try to cancel you, to teach the rest of us to shut up.

Ohio Republicans: you’re getting what you voted for.

💉💉 Yesterday, I reported on Steven Crowder’s hidden-camera exposé about the sick pervert who ran New York City’s covid response. The story made the New York Times. Here’s the ridiculously watered-down headline:

Partied? It sounds like he just went to a disco. Social Distancing? What about getting people fired for not taking the experimental jabs? Preaching? How about bragging how unbearable he made people’s lives for public health purposes?

It was the driest article I’ve ever seen from the Grey Lady, who is no stranger to controversy and scandal. The author’s tone was relentlessly neutral, verging on clinical, seething with barely restrained resentment at being forced to report it at all. While the article did refer, several times, to Varma’s orgies and his deviant, drug-addled sexcapades, it was only unemotionally and remotely, consistently applying the dry, uncreative label, “sex parties.”

This time, the Times’ journalistic thesaurus was not in evidence.

Although the Times rounded up several people to quote for the story, none directly criticized Dr. Vermin, I mean Dr. Varma, except for his hypocrisy in imposing mandates and lockdowns while breaking his own rules:

Absent from the reporting was even a hint of moral concern over his ghastly conduct, his poor judgment, his pill-popping, or his swinging pediatrician wife, Melissa.

Nor did the Times report Varma’s gloating about how unbearable he made New Yorkers’ livers, to force them to get the shots.

The Times never mentioned vile Dr. Varma’s illegal drug use, not one single time. In a sane world, police would be investigating him right now. Astonishingly, the Times even edited out Varma’s own self-criticism, which would have made the story much more interesting, the admission his own behavior was “all this deviant sexual stuff.”

Again, in a sane world, verminous Varma would be permanently driven from polite society. The Times found nothing to condemn in Varma except his private inconsistency with his public policies. But the readers aren’t insane. You should see the article’s comments. Here’s one very telling example:

Yep, that commenter was wrong.

But at the end of the day, they had to cover the story. They didn’t trot out the time-worn “Republicans pounce” trope. And even if they only covered despicable Dr. Varma as just another ‘pandemic hypocrisy’ story, and even if it never appears in print again, they were nonetheless forced to cover it as straight news.

Crowder’s independent hidden-camera journalism broke through.

Also remarkably, Varma’s vile story —or at least its hypocritical angle— was widely covered by corporate media. The Atlantic’s was the worst take of all:

Relatable? Speak for yourself, Atlantic.

🔥🔥 NPR joined reporting on Trump shooter Ryan Routh’s bizarre backstory this morning in an article headlined, “In his hometown, Trump's alleged would-be assassin acted like he was 'above the law’.” It was a strange story for a several reasons.

I’ve been holding off calling this out, since everybody makes mistakes, especially me, but I can’t just stand it anymore. Since early summer, I’ve been seeing a disquieting trend of basic grammar and spelling mistakes creeping into top-tier corporate media stories. For example, in NPR’s caption above, NPR reported that police “managed to diffuse” an armed standoff with Routh (that never resulted in jail time, for some unexplained reason. You try that.).

Anyway. The point is, it’s not “managed to diffuse.” That’s just wrong. “Diffuse” means spread over a wide area. They meant defuse. “Defuse” means to neutralize or resolve a tense situation. Police defused the standoff.

Hopefully, this unsettling trend is merely a DEI phenomenon and not an artifact of declining cognitive ability due to some unidentified environmental factor. An environmental factor like the covid jabs. Just saying.

NPR’s article was equally remarkable. Routh’s crimes were well-known, well-documented, and never went anywhere, rightfully convincing the failed construction worker he was ‘above the law.’ An inquisitive reporter would have tripped over Routh’s extensive civil and criminal history in public records. Which raises the question of how, when corporate media was constantly quoting Routh in 2022, they somehow managed not to discover his extensive history?

Were reporters simply uncurious? Or did someone vouch for Routh?

🔥🔥 We are less than two months from the election, and things are practically white-hot now. The UK Guardian ran a breaking story yesterday headlined, “Republicans step up effort to change Nebraska voting rules to help Trump.” Of course it’s to help Trump. Who else does the Guardian think Republicans should help? Harris? The Haitians?

You probably weren’t even thinking about Nebraska. Back in 1992, Nebraska changed the way the state allocated its five electoral college votes. It created a unique, overly complicated allocation system with districts, basically allowing for mix-and-match voting to give Democrats at least one reliable electoral vote each cycle.

Believe it or not, Nebraska could conceivably decide the 2024 race. It could be that close. Here’s how the New York Times described the math of how a single Nebraska electoral vote (the blue Omaha district) might tip the race in Trump’s favor:

Republicans moved quickly this week to revert Nebraska to a simple winner-takes-all system, like most states. The change would require a two-thirds majority of the Nebraska Senate. So the key vote has boiled down to a suddenly famous former Democrat, Senator Mike McDonnell.

McDonnell is a Catholic who joined the Republican party just this year after his own party censured him over opposing transgender surgeries for minors. McDonnell has also vowed he would never support “winner takes all” in Nebraska, but the Guardian says he is now “wavering.”

Waver harder.

Maine is the only other state that uses a similar system. Last year, Maine Democrats swore that, if Nebraska’s Republicans moved to revert to a “winner takes all” system, then Maine would do the same thing, thereby neutralizing the effect of the Nebraska change.

But chess-playing Nebraska Republicans waited till the last minute, making a comparable Maine change now impossible, since Maine’s rules require 90 days before a bill can become effective.

According to the Times’ version, Senator McDonnell’s phone is now blowing up with calls and text messages from all over the country, if not the world. McDonnell is in the spotlight, under immense pressure to keep his original promise and not help Republicans change Nebraska’s electoral allocation system.

So … C&Cers from Nebraska, contact Senator McDonnell and express your support for winner-takes-all: (402) 471-2710; mmcdonnell@leg.ne.gov. Do it right now!

🔥🔥 Yesterday, NPR ran another intensely encouraging story headlined, “Georgia's Republican-led election board OKs controversial rule to hand-count ballots.” Finally!

Yesterday —pushing through opposition from the state’s own Republican Secretary of State and Attorney General— the state’s conservative election board approved a rule requiring hand counts of voter ballots in November’s election.

They’re to count the numbers of ballots, not the individual races.

In other words, they’ll be double-checking the electronic machines. Technically, each voting precinct’s local supervisor is required to hand-count the cast ballots, and cross-check those results against how many ballots the electronic machines claim to have tabulated.

NPR whined that, according to experts, hand-counting is slower and less reliable than electronic tabulation. Thanks, Captain Obvious, for pointing out hand counting is slower. But whether it is less reliable — well, that one seems debatable.

Why not count them? Counting cast ballots at the precinct level hardly seems impossible. One suspects all the hysteria must be for a different reason.

On top of that great news, the board passed six other rule changes yesterday. The new rules included: allowing poll watchers to access more places during vote tabulation, daily posting of the numbers of people in each county who cast ballots, and publicly posting reconciliation reports to the county website.

All these rules, including the counting of bare ballots, are designed to make cheating harder and easier to catch. Keep them guessing. Good things are happening, so keep your spirits up.

Have a wonderful weekend! I’ll see you back here on Monday morning, to kick the last full week of September off right.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds.  I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can:  ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

How to Donate to Coffee & Covid

Twitter: jchilders98.
Truth Social: jchilders98.
MeWe: mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.
Telegram: t.me/coffeecovidnews
C&C Swag! www.shopcoffeeandcovid.com